President Trump on Tuesday pardoned a pair of Oregon cattle ranchers who had been serving sentences for arson on federal land — sentences that set off the armed occupation of a wildlife refuge in 2016.  Dwight L. Hammond, now 76, and his son, Steven D. Hammond, 49, became a cause célèbre that inspired an antigovernment group’s battle with the federal government over its control of rural land in Oregon.

“The Hammonds are multigeneration cattle ranchers in Oregon imprisoned in connection with a fire that leaked onto a small portion of neighboring public grazing land,” Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, said in a statement. “The evidence at trial regarding the Hammonds’ responsibility for the fire was conflicting, and the jury acquitted them on most of the charges.”

The Hammonds were convicted in 2012 and served a short time in prison and then released. But a federal appeals court in 2015 ruled that they had been improperly sentenced and ordered them to serve more time. The Hammonds surrendered to federal authorities in January 2016.  The men were prosecuted under a terrorism statute enacted in 1996 after the Oklahoma City bombing and were subject to a five-year mandatory minimum sentence.  Their lawyers called on then-President Barack Obama to grant clemency, arguing that the five-year sentences were excessive.

Full article HERE.

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